Decentralized power The Dec. 6 TGI letter, “On common ground”, ended with the question, “change to what?” One answer might be, “to continue opening a dialogue that will replace our currently contrived dialogue, which has until now been directed by
Decentralized power
The Dec. 6 TGI letter, “On common ground”, ended with the question, “change to what?” One answer might be, “to continue opening a dialogue that will replace our currently contrived dialogue, which has until now been directed by the elite 1 percent.”
The recent TGI letters from Robert Merkle and Ryan Couhan have indicated that we are incapable of predicting or forcing the outcome of what is emerging worldwide, i.e. “what the butterfly will look like after it emerges from the cocoon”. We may, however, examine and open a dialogue regarding “possible beneficial characteristics of the emergent butterfly”.
The basic premise of the “On common ground” letter suggests that “Occupy Wall Street” protesters are angry at the way government policies favor the wealthy.
More accurately, most educated and informed “Occupy” folks see the problem as centralized power, currently in the form of corporate power. The greatest concentrations of wealth reside in transnational corporations, which are able to influence and control “the best democracy money can buy” by means of corporate campaign financing, corporate lobbyists, the revolving door between government regulators and corporations, the expensive judicial system and other complicit government officials to name just a few.
Over the past 30 to 40 years we have slowly witnessed, in essence, a “corporate coup d’etat take-over of our government”, as described by Pulitzer Prize winning author Chris Hedges.
Centralized power in the most recent past took the form of National Imperialism. Today, central power takes the form of the Corporate State. And in the future the most probable and most gravely threatening form of central power may be the formation of a “One World Government.” Therefore, one of the obviously most beneficial characteristics of the New Emergence appears to be decentralized power, rather than centralized power, and this is a very important “common ground” between the big-government reformers (Tea Party movement), and the big corporate power/corporate state reformers (Occupy Movement) described above.
The decentralized versus centralized-power litmus-test therefore begins to reveal countless possible examples of decentralization: Small business capitalism over corporate power; regional economic stability over corporate global control and dependence; less centralized corporate control of the public airwaves and of the free press; decentralized banks rather than central banks; regional sovereignty based on populist preference rather than centralized command based on corporate power, nationalist power, authoritarian power etc.
May the open dialogue begin!
Pierre Costello, Koloa
Education against ignorance
The Garden Island recently published a letter opining that President Obama would be the “demise of the nation”.
I think such a sad eventuality is more likely to be brought about by the failure of American citizens to understand the basics of our nation’s governing bodies and its system of “checks and balances”.
Campaign ads promising to “do away with some law, some department, some regulation on Day 1” feed these misconceptions.
The antidote to such ignorance is education. Despite our rush to trim the costs of public school instruction and focus on math and literacy alone, we cannot afford to ignore teaching social studies, starting in elementary school. Only then will we have the informed electorate the United States needs.
Suzan Kelsey Brooks
West Des Moines, Iowa
The garden of aloha
Don’t let it be forgot that once there was a spot on this planet where they grew aloha.
As soon as we were invited into the aloha garden, we determined that it wasn’t really a commercial crop, so instead of saying, “it’s a dirty rotten job but somebody’s got to do it, glad it’s them and not us,” we said, “well, the crop may not be commercial, but the real estate is prime,” so we sent the Hawaiians off to Las Vegas.
After a while we looked at each other like anthropologists and said, “I wonder what happened here. Maybe we should start a preservation society and collect anecdotal material; film Hawaiians singing their music if we can find any who haven’t yet gone to Vegas.”
Then we said, “I wonder what happened to aloha. Some of these young guys are turning into activists. They say they want their land back. Can you imagine? That could be really inconvenient.”
Judy Nalda, Princeville
